South Sydney handed struggling St George Illawarra a third straight defeat, and second one-point loss in succession, with a nervous 19-18 golden point triumph at Kogarah Oval on Sunday afternoon.

Rookie half-back Adam Reynolds' break-out season for the Bunnies continued as he gave his side its only lead of the game by slotting a field goal in extra time to clinch the two competition points.

"It started out left and [I saw it] coming back, and as soon as [I saw it] coming back I knew it was going over," Reynolds told Grandstand moments after breaking the game with his drop-goal attempt.

"It's just a good feeling. Everything stops, everyone pauses, as soon as you celebrate everyone goes up.

"It's just the best feeling."

Steve Price's St George outfit has now lost three on the trot, including last round's 13-12 defeat to lowly Penrith, and sits 11th on the table while South Sydney in sixth have consolidated its spot in the eight.

The Rabbitohs came into the clash refreshed off a bye week riding the momentum of two straight wins over more fancied sides North Queensland and Cronulla, but the Dragons made the early impact.

Price called on the Dragons to improve their starts before the game, following two successive defeats, and his players responded by opening the scoring after just four minutes when Jason Nightingale hauled in a Jamie Soward bomb.

The early setback appeared to affect the visitors, who were without Queensland duo Greg Inglis and Dave Taylor, as the Dragons dominated the opening exchanges.

Price's team, missing Blues representatives Ben Creagh and Trent Merrin in addition to the injured Michael Weyman, continued to press, keeping Souths pinned back in their own half.

Soward doubled the hosts' lead with his first try since round 26 of last season after a good break and offload from Brett Morris found the axed New South Wales five-eighth who sprinted through to score under the posts.

Souths finally woke up and started to play in the latter part of the first half with Reynolds growing in confidence and they were rewarded by a try from Sam Burgess on the half-hour mark.

The big Englishman powered his way over from five metres, brushing aside Jake Marketo for his second try of the 2012 campaign.

And on the stroke of half-time the Rabbitohs levelled the scores after great work from Matt King to gather a high kick from Issac Luke and hand off to the advancing Reynolds who raced home for his first NRL try.

Reynolds said that when his team-mates adhered to coach Michael Maguire's blueprints, success followed.

"Credit to all the boys, they dug in in D [defence]," he said.

"We just had to stick to our gameplan and kick to the corners. When we did our gameplan we went forward and gave ourselves the opportunity to score points.

"We backed our fitness just to get us back in the game and we knew we just had to keep sticking to our ... structures.

"We did that and getting back into it, it gave us a chance to win the game."

The second half followed a similar pattern with the Dragons taking the early initiative with a Matt Cooper try out of dummy-half, but it was Souths who looked the brighter side after the break.

They were rewarded for their inventiveness after 61 minutes when Andrew Everingham continued his brilliant rookie season with his ninth try in just eight games.

Debutant Justin Hunt thought he had won the game with a try in the left corner, but his foot brushed the line and with Soward failing with a penalty and two field goals, the game went into golden point in front of a crowd of 14,894.

Soward had two field goal attempts and Hornby tried a third before regular time expired but neither Dragon could find his mark.

It was up to Reynolds after that to seal it for the Bunnies and he did not disappoint, continuing his perfect afternoon with the boot.

In a spot of bad news for the Rabbitohs, star English forward Burgess left the ground in the second half with a potential leg injury.